Protecting NC Trout Streams

In North Carolina’s western counties, trout fishing is more than a pastime. Recreational fishermen and pro anglers alike contribute over one-billion dollars each year to local business. Following a challenge by SELC, a 2009 N.C. Court of Appeals decision upheld the state’s protective buffer for trout streams in a victory for North Carolina’s water quality and restored protection for thousands of miles of designated trout streams across the state. These safeguards are at the heart of the state’s Sedimentation Pollution Control Act.

Buffers, Trout, and Clean Water

Piping trout streams and denaturalizing the areas next to those streams is a recurring part of proposals for developments in North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains, especially for mountaintop golf courses. Numerous studies show that vegetated buffers prevent sedimentation and warming of mountain streams, which in their natural state run cold and clear. The trout buffer requirement was enacted because trout require clean, cold water and are therefore vulnerable to buffer loss due to streamside developments.

Significant Impacts

SELC pursued legal action because the N.C. Division of Land Resources allowed the Mountain Air Country Club golf course in Yancey County to violate state buffer requirements when the developer impacted thousands of feet of mountainside trout stream, reshaping and severely modifying the streams to accommodate fairways and greens.

The Court of Appeals decision overturned an earlier split-decision by the Sediment Control Commission and clarified the limits on the discretion of state regulators in considering requests from developers to remove streamside vegetation and enclose streams in pipes, activities that are not temporary or minimal and thus not permissible in trout buffers, according to the Court of Appeals.